Mexico City, Mexico, Feb 25, 2008 / 02:33 pm (CNA).- Father Hugo Valdemar, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico City, said this Sunday that in the wake of the death of a 15 year-old girl from a botched legal abortion, the law should be declared unsuitable by the court.

Father Valdemar noted that a poll carried out by the National Commission of Mexico for Human Rights showed that 70 percent of Mexicans oppose abortion. “Therefore this is not a very popular law and it would be beneficial to reverse it.” Mexico’s Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on whether or not the law is constitutional.

Father Valdemar said the Church is saddened over the death of the young mother and over “the deaths of the six thousand babies aborted in the last year since the law took effect.” “These deaths cause great indignation, profound sorrow, and what we will do is pray for that person and for the children who have died,” he added. “The Church raises her voice of conscience, her moral voice, to say that it is not licit to kill children in the wombs of their mothers,” the priest said.

He also defended the right of the Church’s pastors “to express our repudiation of the killing of these thousands of children in our city.” “We are exercising our freedom of expression,” he stressed.